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Abstract

This paper examines two types of complex predicates in Japanese from a diachronic perspective.
The two-fold purpose is bring more diachronic data into the dialogue on complex
predicates and to evaluate the claim by Butt and Lahiri (1998) that light verb constructions are diachronically stable. Using Japanese data it is possible to test this hypothesis. While the serial
verb construction has become more restricted with time, over the centuries the light verb construction
[N(-ACC) suru] has remained stable and become dramatically more frequent. Using
natural written data rather than constructed examples, I demonstrate that in previous stages of
Japanese - namely Old Japanese and Classical Japanese - the SVC had fewer restrictions on internal
order, transitivity mismatches were possible, and motion verb grammaticalization was less developed than Modern Standard Japanese. In contrast, the suru-type light verb construction
has undergone no significant changes in any attested stage of Japanese other than increase in token frequency.